FWIW the tasting exam we had in December has been graded and returned already. Although the waiting list for the exam is pretty long, the grading is coming back faster with the new format.

That's great to hear. It would also be nice to extend the time that the online exam results are good for. I had to take the exam in order to get on a waitlist for a tasting exam a few hours away from home. If I don't get into that exam, my results will expire and I'll be forced to start over again. I don't mind the wait if I don't have to start all over again.

FWIW the tasting exam we had in December has been graded and returned already. Although the waiting list for the exam is pretty long, the grading is coming back faster with the new format.

That's great to hear. It would also be nice to extend the time that the online exam results are good for. I had to take the exam in order to get on a waitlist for a tasting exam a few hours away from home. If I don't get into that exam, my results will expire and I'll be forced to start over again. I don't mind the wait if I don't have to start all over again.

I believe once the exam grading backlog has shrunk, they want to start allowing more exams per month (or more participants per exam). Maybe this is not far away!

Logged

Delmarva United Homebrewers - President by inverse coup - former president ousted himself.AHA Member since 2006BJCP Certified: B0958

NHC is not about getting feedback about your beers. If it were, then no one would ever complain about not being able to enter it. You could always enter ANY homebrew competition for that kind of feedback.

NHC is about fame and glory. That is why so many people get upset about not being able to enter it. You can possibly become the next Jamil or Gordon by doing well in NHC. If you disagree then you are lying to yourself

If NHC is that important to you AND its entry window conflicted YOUR work schedule, then maybe you should have taken the day off from work! I did because it was important to me.

I was at my computer entering beers exactly on time. Then the system took a dump. That is my fault how? Then the info from AHA was that they were working on it so I waited. It never said "all clear, go ahead and enter". Then all the sites were booked full. WTH?

The message that the AHA is still working on it is still up by the way!

How do you offer a national competition and then refuse entries at some arbitrary cutoff, and still call it a national competition? If there are too many entries to judge, then something needs to be done about to increase judging capacity or decrease entry numbers. There shouldn't need to be a hard cutoff, _that_ is unfair.

I'm a bjcp National judge and I judged at one of the judge centers a couple years ago. It took a whole day of my time, we drove hundreds of miles, and was shocked to learn that the AHA only kicks back some very small portion of the entrance fee to the local site. It wasn't enough to even feed the judges, we had to leave the site to get food!

How can the AHA expect to get volunteer judging sites for free basically, and end up getting good qualified judge volunteers to provide accurate and fair judging of the first round if the AHA pockets the bulk of the entrance fee and doesn't support the 1st round judging of the beer.

If there's such a craze over this thing, and there's not enough judge sites then that needs to be fixed. Kick more of the fee to the local 1st round sites so that you'll get more 1st round sites involved, and/or raise the entrance fee to cut back on the number of entrants.

We do a regional competition in Buffalo / Niagara Falls that judged over 600 entries last year. We have the judge pool to handle being a first round site for NHC. We're adding bjcp judges all the time. Would we ever do it? Who knows, no one ever asked us. One thing I know from organizing it for three years now, you can't do it for $2 or $3 an entry. You can't even feed your judges a bologne sandwich for that.

6. Entry fee increase of an additional $2 per entry. The additional revenue generated from this fee increase will fund enhancements to support first round judge centers that are intended improve the judging experience.

*****

Complaining about things from past years isn't really fair. The AHA listened, and changes have been made. I would suggest that those talking about things like First Round sites not being given enough money to feed judges simply wait a couple months and give the changes a chance...

as for the competition itself, I think people like Tom have covered the difficulties well enough on previous pages and previous threads.

And if there is a group that thinks they can handle an NHC first round site, I would suggest they go to Janis, not wait for her to come to them. The FOAM club down in Tulsa did, and now they have a regional.

Tom, can you set the record straight on this? What kind of support does a judging center get from the AHA when they host a 1st round site?

I know the entrance fees go straight to the AHA, but how much makes it's way down to the organizer to rent the hall, feed the judges, print the scoresheets, buy the cups, and all the other expenses that go along with running a decent competition?

A first round organizer here in NY told me a number and I couldn't believe it. It was like $3 out of the total entry fee. Is that true?

How in the world could anyone run a competition on that amount? We do a 600 plus entry competition in Buffalo, NY and we break even at somewhere between $5 and 7 dollars per entry.

I don't think it's a matter of organizers getting 'burned out' as you say. It's more a matter of questioning the idea that the AHA thinks you can run a competition and get decent judges to volunteer their time and skills without so much as feeding them a decent lunch!

I've also been warned that _every_expense has to be reimbursed from the AHA, they won't pay any of the costs up front even if they are identified well in advance such as the hall rental, cups, and food. And often the reimbursements are denied. I guess that would 'burn' me out in a hurry too, if I were to volunteer to organize a competition, and then end up eating the cost of running the thing!

Seriously, there was not a volunteer to organize it. The same goes for Portland OR, the previous organizer declined and the Oregon Brew Crew was contacted and asked to host a site and they did not respond.

There were 11 judging centers available (because of 2nd round constraints) and various places were contacted to see if they were interested in hosting. The first 11 to say yes got them. It's not like the AHA assigns judging centers based on where the brewers are, it is where the organizers and judges are. No organizer = no judging center.

It is a ton of work to run a judging center and people get burned out and don't want to do it year after year. That is totally understandable, and we shouldn't put too much pressure on these valuable volunteers. If you want to run a judging center then talk to Janis - starting in July. If you want your city to host a judging center year in and year out, I'd suggest you get a small crew of volunteers and rotate the organizer so they can train others and maintain the desire to do it.

6. Entry fee increase of an additional $2 per entry. The additional revenue generated from this fee increase will fund enhancements to support first round judge centers that are intended improve the judging experience.

*****

Complaining about things from past years isn't really fair. The AHA listened, and changes have been made. I would suggest that those talking about things like First Round sites not being given enough money to feed judges simply wait a couple months and give the changes a chance...

as for the competition itself, I think people like Tom have covered the difficulties well enough on previous pages and previous threads.

And if there is a group that thinks they can handle an NHC first round site, I would suggest they go to Janis, not wait for her to come to them. The FOAM club down in Tulsa did, and now they have a regional.

2) The AHA has approve us for something on the order of $2500 - how is this not enough to run a competition with food? I guess we'll find out, but our preliminary budget shows us with enough money for a fully catered Friday dinner, hot breakfast Saturday and hot lunch on Saturday.

Tom, can you set the record straight on this? What kind of support does a judging center get from the AHA when they host a 1st round site?

This is a question better answered by Janis, I don't know for sure. When I organized the first round in the past, we got plenty of money to host and provide food for the judges. It was tight, we weren't eating sushi or Dungeness crab, but we never had to spend any money out of pocket. The AHA also ships cups to the site, so there is no cost there (although we invested in glassware years ago so we don't need the cups). So either the numbers changed after my time or something else happened.

Also, the regional judging centers don't need to worry about prizes, so there is no cost there. The fees from the entries in the NHC also have to pay for the second round of judging, and part of Janis's salary. It's not like the AHA is really pocketing a chunk of the entry fee, the money is spent on supporting and running the competition.

2) The AHA has approve us for something on the order of $2500 - how is this not enough to run a competition with food? I guess we'll find out, but our preliminary budget shows us with enough money for a fully catered Friday dinner, hot breakfast Saturday and hot lunch on Saturday.

How much was out of pocket that you had to be reimbursed from AHA? How happy were you with the reimbursement process?

Did you have to ship back the scoresheets or did the AHA handle that?

If it were 750 entries, and you didn't have to handle the shipping costs out of that then yes someone should be able to do it for that amount. The problem seems to be getting enough judge sites volunteering for the task. I know that after judging our local competition, the last thing I want to do is sit down and judge another huge competition.

One of the reasons that we're able to get our competition judged is because our own beer is in there, our friends' beer is in there, and a lot of potentially new club members' beers are in there. So the motivation is there to put on a well run competition and provide good feedback for our friends, ourselves and the local homebrewing community.

But to host an NHC 1st round site, in which none of us could get our beers entered, for brewers that aren't in our local area, after judging our own local competition, for $3 an entry.....? That's a tough sell and I, for one, wouldn't take that proposition to my club.

The AHA would have to provide some form of motivation for taking on the task of being a 1st round judge site. One cost free and logical incentive would be to allow judges the opportunity to get their beers into the NHC. Judge or steward three flights one year and you get to enter beer in the next year during an early registration period. Not only would this motivate the existing judge, it would motivate more brewers to become judges; and the lack of willing judges and judging sites seems to be the bottleneck in the NHC.

Good judge 'thank you' gifts are also appreciated by judges, and if provided by the AHA they would benefit from their scale. For example, for us to order growler coozies as judge gifts, it's several dollars each b/c we're only ordering a few dozen. For the AHA, if they ordered a few thousand, the cost would be much less.

Judge swag wouldn't do it alone though. For a club to take on the duties of judging a NHC 1st round, their beer would have to be in the competition.

2) The AHA has approve us for something on the order of $2500 - how is this not enough to run a competition with food? I guess we'll find out, but our preliminary budget shows us with enough money for a fully catered Friday dinner, hot breakfast Saturday and hot lunch on Saturday.

I was at my computer entering beers exactly on time. Then the system took a dump. That is my fault how? Then the info from AHA was that they were working on it so I waited. It never said "all clear, go ahead and enter". Then all the sites were booked full. WTH?

I still do not think this is correct. Ohio, NY, and SD had 400+ excess entries, but it appears they have been moved to Milwaukee, Kansas City, and Seattle. Now there are only 4 regions with a total of 30 excess entries. 5 regions, ranging from Seattle with 60 to Tulsa with 356, are still shown as having spots available. Total spots available, again if you believe the web site, went up by about 180, to 1010. Not everone will choose to ship when they planned to drop off at the local region.

There are already 31% more people registered than last year. If the numbers are correct, and if when reopened the current average of 3.18 entries per person holds, we'll end up with about 49% more people entered in this competition than ever before. For a competition that is growing by about 5% entries, that is pretty damn good.

I'd like to see something from the AHA confirming that yes, there are spots still available and when they finish sorting out the events of last week they will re-open this competition...

However, it may be time to create a tiered competition structure where you have to qualify to enter the NHC.

That way if you are looking for just feedback, you use a local competition, working your way up to "fame" at the NHC.

That way, there would be less collisions at the NHC level. Most competitive events have this type of structure.

For instance, not everyone can enter the olympics directly, if they are fast on their ipad. Although, if they did the Olympics would be a whole lot more fun to watch.

Good luck to those that made it in.Bob

I would agree that you should have to qualify at certain event (s) to qualify for this competition, just as you do for MCAB. This would set the entry limit by use of designated competitions, and would further add to the quality of the brews entered. I haven't read the entire string of posts, so sorry if I am being redundant here.

One of the reasons that we're able to get our competition judged is because our own beer is in there, our friends' beer is in there, and a lot of potentially new club members' beers are in there. So the motivation is there to put on a well run competition and provide good feedback for our friends, ourselves and the local homebrewing community.

But to host an NHC 1st round site, in which none of us could get our beers entered, for brewers that aren't in our local area, after judging our own local competition, for $3 an entry.....? That's a tough sell and I, for one, wouldn't take that proposition to my club.

The AHA would have to provide some form of motivation for taking on the task of being a 1st round judge site. One cost free and logical incentive would be to allow judges the opportunity to get their beers into the NHC. Judge or steward three flights one year and you get to enter beer in the next year during an early registration period. Not only would this motivate the existing judge, it would motivate more brewers to become judges; and the lack of willing judges and judging sites seems to be the bottleneck in the NHC.

Good judge 'thank you' gifts are also appreciated by judges, and if provided by the AHA they would benefit from their scale. For example, for us to order growler coozies as judge gifts, it's several dollars each b/c we're only ordering a few dozen. For the AHA, if they ordered a few thousand, the cost would be much less.

Judge swag wouldn't do it alone though. For a club to take on the duties of judging a NHC 1st round, their beer would have to be in the competition.

Good points here...that's why I think that judges should get a priority in entering the competition. But then there is a chance that the competition becomes a competition of judges.